25 February, 2011

HEADQUARTERS, FORT OF THE ALAMO: Sir; On the 23rd of Feb., the enemy in large force entered the city of Bexar, which could not be prevented, as I had not sufficient force to occupy both positions. Col. Bartes, the Adjutant-Major of the President-General Santa Anna, demanded a surrender at discretion, calling us foreign rebels. I answered them with a cannon shot, upon which the enemy commenced a bombardment with a five inch howitzer, which together with a heavy cannonade, has been kept up incessantly ever since. I instantly sent express to Col. Fannin, at Goliad, and to the people of Gonzales and San Felipe. Today at 10 o'clock a.m. some two or three hundred Mexicans crossed the river below and came up under cover of the houses until they arrived within virtual point blank shot, when we opened a heavy discharge of grape and canister on them, together with a well directed fire from small arms which forced them to halt and take shelter in the houses about 90 or 100 yards from our batteries. The action continued to rage about two hours, when the enemy retreated in confusion, dragging many of their dead and wounded.

During the action, the enemy kept up a constant bombardment and discharge of balls, grape, and canister. We know from actual observation that many of the enemy were wounded -- while we, on our part, have not lost a man. Two or three of our men have been slightly scratched by pieces of rock, but have not been disabled. I take great pleasure in stating that both officers and men conducted themselves with firmness and bravery. Lieutenant Simmons of cavalry acting as infantry, and Captains Carey, Dickinson and Blair of the artillery, rendered essential service, and Charles Despallier and Robert Brown gallantly sallied out and set fire to houses which afforded the enemy shelter, in the face of enemy fire. Indeed, the whole of the men who were brought into action conducted themselves with such heroism that it would be injustice to discriminate. The Hon. David Crockett was seen at all points, animating the men to do their duty. Our numbers are few and the enemy still continues to approximate his works to ours. I have every reason to apprehend an attack from his whole force very soon; but I shall hold out to the last extremity, hoping to secure reinforcements in a day or two. Do hasten on aid to me as rapidly as possible, as from the superior number of the enemy, it will be impossible for us to keep them out much longer. If they overpower us, we fall a sacrifice at the shrine of our country, and we hope prosperity and our country will do our memory justice. Give me help, oh my country! Victory or Death!

To The People of Texas and
All Americans In The World --
February 24, 1836

Fellow citizens & compatriots --

I am beseiged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna -- I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man -- The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken -- I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls -- I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism, & every thing dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch -- The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country --

VICTORY OR DEATH

William Barret Travis
Lt. Col. Comdt.

P.S. The Lord is on our side -- When the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn -- We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels & got into the walls 20 or 30 head of Beeves -- Travis

COMMANDANCY OF BEXAR, 3 o'clock p.m.: The enemy in large force are in sight. We want men and provisions. Send them to us. We have 150 men and are determined to defend the Alamo to the last. Give us assistance.

P.S. Send an express to San Felipe with news night and day.

From W.B. Travis and James Bowie
To James W. Fannin (at Goliad)
February 23, 1836

COMMANDANCY OF BEXAR: We have removed all the men to the Alamo where we make such resistance as is due our honor, and that of a country, until we can get assistance from you, which we expect you to forward immediately. In this extremity, we hope you will send us all the men you can spare promptly. We have one hundred and forty six men, who are determined never to retreat. We have but little provisions, but enough to serve us till you and your men arrive. We deem it unnecessary to repeat to a brave officer, who knows his duty, that we call on him for assistance.

18 February, 2011

As I also mentioned yesterday, in some of the emails, HB Gary people are talking about creating "personas", what we would call sockpuppets. This is not new. PR firms have been using fake "people" to promote products and other things for a while now, both online and even in bars and coffee houses.

According to an embedded MS Word document found in one of the HB Gary emails, it involves creating an army of sockpuppets, with sophisticated "persona management" software that allows a small team of only a few people to appear to be many, while keeping the personas from accidentally cross-contaminating each other. Then, to top it off, the team can actually automate some functions so one persona can appear to be an entire Brooks Brothers riot online.

Persona management entails not just the deconfliction of persona artifacts such as names, email addresses, landing pages, and associated content. It also requires providing the human actors technology that takes the decision process out of the loop when using a specific persona. For this purpose we custom developed either virtual machines or thumb drives for each persona. This allowed the human actor to open a virtual machine or thumb drive with an associated persona and have all the appropriate email accounts, associations, web pages, social media accounts, etc. pre-established and configured with visual cues to remind the actor which persona he/she is using so as not to accidentally cross-contaminate personas during use.

And all of this is for the purposes of infiltration, data mining, and (here's the one that really worries me) ganging up on bloggers, commenters and otherwise "real" people to smear enemies and distort the truth.

AND

In another Word document, one of the team spells out how automation can work so one person can be many personas:

Using the assigned social media accounts we can automate the posting of content that is relevant to the persona. In this case there are specific social media strategy website RSS feeds we can subscribe to and then repost content on twitter with the appropriate hashtags. In fact using hashtags and gaming some location based check-in services we can make it appear as if a persona was actually at a conference and introduce himself/herself to key individuals as part of the exercise, as one example. There are a variety of social media tricks we can use to add a level of realness to all fictitious personas.

Now, go read the entire article, hit the FBO link and understand, they are scared and doing everything they can to stop the truth of the crimes from getting out and will do everything in their power to stop things and retain power over we simpletons who firmly think that what our Founding Fathers bequeathed us is proper, good and right.

Legislation introduced in the Senate this week would broadly criminalize leaks of classified information. The bill (S. 355) sponsored by Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) would make it a felony for a government employee or contractor who has authorized access to classified information to disclose such information to an unauthorized person in violation of his or her nondisclosure agreement.

Under existing law, criminal penalties apply only to the unauthorized disclosure of a handful of specified categories of classified information (in non-espionage cases). These categories include codes, cryptography, communications intelligence, identities of covert agents, and nuclear weapons design information. The new bill would amend the espionage statutes to extend such penalties to the unauthorized disclosure of any classified information.

(Another pending bill, known as the SHIELD Act, would specifically criminalize disclosure — and publication — of information concerning human intelligence activities and source identities. Both bills were originally introduced at the end of the last Congress, and were reintroduced this month.)

"I am convinced that changes in technology and society, combined with statutory and judicial changes to the law, have rendered some aspects of our espionage laws less effective than they need to be to protect the national security," said Sen. Cardin. "I also believe that we need to enhance our ability to prosecute... those who make unauthorized disclosures of classified information."

"We don't need an Official State Secrets Act, and we must be careful not to chill protected First Amendment activities," he said. "We do, however, need to do a better job of preventing unauthorized disclosures of classified information that can harm the United States, and at the same time we need to ensure that public debates continue to take place on important national security and foreign policy issues."

13 February, 2011

The Big Clubs in Mexico's Drug War Aren't Slipping Through the Gun-Show Loophole

Another series of leaked State Department cables made public this week by WikiLeaks lend credence to investigative reports on gun trafficking and the drug war published by Narco News as far back as 2009.

The big battles in the drug war in Mexico are "not being fought with Saturday night specials, hobby rifles and hunting shotguns," Narco News reported in March 2009, against the grain, at a time when the mainstream media was pushing a narrative that assigned the blame for the rising tide of weapons flowing into Mexico to U.S. gun stores and gun shows.

Rather, we reported at the time, "the drug trafficking organizations are now in possession of high-powered munitions in vast quantities that can’t be explained by the gun-show loophole."

Those weapons, found in stashes seized by Mexican law enforcers and military over the past several years, include U.S.-military issued rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers and explosives.

Over the past few weeks, things have become very, very uneasy according to a good friend of mine down along the border who told me how the bridges were closed along the Rio yesterday due to violence in Mexico, however, other things have been going on.

He made me aware of a grenade attack on a bar at the end of last month:

Authorities evacuated the bar after they received a call about the explosive, which was apparently tossed into the bar. No injuries were reported and bomb did not detonate because both pins were not removed, Treviño said.

Then, it was announced that the grenade was linked to recent attacks on a TV Station and consulate:

A live grenade tossed into a Pharr bar last month came from the same cache of weapons used in recent attacks on a Monterrey television station and that city's U.S. Consulate, law enforcement officials said.

Investigators have traced the explosives used in each incident to a lot manufactured in South Korea and later discovered in a stash house believed to be run by the Zetas, the heavily armed paramilitary wing of the Tamaulipas-based Gulf Cartel.

Hit the link to read the rest of that post and see how quickly the local paper there "changed" the stories and if you want more detail about such, then hit this link.

Yes, there are wars in Mexico and it long ago spilled North over the Rio Grande with thanks to the corrupt War On Some Drugs.

Prohibition has NEVER worked and NEVER will and our so-called leaders know this. Legalization/De-Criminalization will not solve all problems, but the MAJORITY of KILLINGS will end. The government bloat WILL decrease, you will have more money in your pocket and yes, you will have to worry about your children, but you already should be. Think back to when you were a teen; were you drinking bath-tub gin or just canned beer? No you were not as it was made cleanly, safely and with the consumer in mind. Right now, your kids are taking whatever they can get their grubby little mitts on and that SHIT is not safe. And do you know why they ingest that SHIT?

TEENAGERS + PROHIBITION = STUPIDITY

And then SO MANY of them carry those desires, tendencies and habits into their adult years because they still think it cool and you think lets lock those terrible alternative pharmacists drug dealers away without NARY a thought as to the consequences or how it benefits BIG PHARMA, BIG PRISON INDUSTRY, BIG MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. Just so long as you do not have to think about it, right? It is easier that way to not have to think how you pissed away your's and your children's birthright.

Demand and end to it NOW and demand the HEADS of the CORRUPT government employees who have long benefited TOO!

It is your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness at stake; but then again, that phrase probably does not mean a thing to the majority of the Republic...

I first posted about this here. Since then, I have been trying to dig up information regarding the FUD produced by it. I spoke to several friends and business associates along that area of the border and two were finally able to confirm what was originally presumed- it was SEMI-AUTO.

Both men gave similar accounts that stated:

The 21-year old man attempted to cross the border with this around 10:30PM.

He was seemingly accompanied by at least one vehicle (one man said 1 the other said 2).

That CPB and the Pharr PD (was told they have men stationed at bridge too) became suspicious when they attempted to turn around.

The accompanying vehicle(s) split and the H3 was stopped wherein the M1919A4 was discovered.

Some CPB and Pharr PD police thought it was full auto but others QUICKLY pointed out that it was not.

Moreover, those bright CPB and Pharr PD Policemen also pointed out that he DID NOT have any belts or a belt linker.

So much for those "Authorized Journalists" at The Monitor and Jared Taylor's reporting skills, but then again, after reviewing comments from several of it's and his "news stories" that I am sure were scrupulously regurgitated reported (then re-written), one cannot expect too much...

10 February, 2011

For example, he says, perhaps if people don't buy insurance when it is first available, "if you ever try to buy insurance again, you'll have to pay three times the market price, and we will put a gold sticker on your forehead and say to all hospitals, 'You do not have to treat this person; this person has forfeited their right to uncompensated care.'"

It should surprise no one that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE), and that agency's parent bureaucracy, the Department of Justice, are hoping to wriggle out from under the dark cloud (hurricane?) of scandal that is "Project Gunwalker."

When you read the article, you will see an excellent question raised indeed!

I was made aware of this late this morning, I do not have a WSJ account so I looked at the Google Cache of the article and did a bit of checking and am not certain about this at all. In fact, after looking I am actually asking several questions beyond the title.

Mr. Ball said he noted these files were unusually large, and discovered that they were actually created in a different program, Pretty Good Privacy, which enabled each file to run as a separate, encryption-protected "virtual hard drive." Without the correct password, the files were completely unintelligible.

It's the equivalent of "a safe with a combination," Mr. Ball said in court. He sent the files to British intelligence services, which returned them decrypted, or unlocked. Once able to open the files, Mr. Ball testified, he still wasn't able to read most of the messages contained with them: Mr. Karim had enciphered the text, leaving it scrambled and unreadable.

Now others will say that the following means the found the keys, but that would be wrong. Read the paragraph above once more then this paragraph:

Mr. Karim left police a clue, however. On the external hard drive was a disguised file that looked like it was meant for viewing thumbnail-size photographs—but that actually consisted of text with instructions for using a spreadsheet containing a purpose-built formula to decipher the message, according to Mr. Ball. The spreadsheet also worked in reverse, enciphering messages before sending to another member of the group, Mr. Ball said.

This means the second level of encryption, not PGP, so the four main questions are:

09 February, 2011

Note the visit is spread over more than one day. StatCounter only reads this way when the visit length is over 24 hours and this says quite a bit- they are very nervous about the release of information of Project Gunwalker if some DHS drone, lawyer or hatchet spends 24+ hours on this blog.

Go spend some time catching a terrorist! Codrea, Vanderbough and CLEANUPATF have provided the basics to make sure those lying bureaucrats get convicted! Oh, that is right, MIAC made those of us who demand you abide by the OATHS YOU SWORE to as nothing more than terrorists.

"The U.S. Justice Department denied a claim made to lawmakers that two guns sold in purchases sanctioned by federal firearms agents were later used in a shootout that left a Border Patrol agent dead near the Arizona-Mexico border,” the Associated Press reports.

A Pharr police officer stopped Julio Cesar Ramirez's in a white 2006 Hummer H3 as he attempted enter the Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge, according to a criminal complaint.

The officer said he noticed a black gun case in the back seat of the Hummer and called U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to the scene.

Since yesterday, this article has been re-written, the FUD has been toned down and the M1919A4 shown in the picture is no longer stated as water-cooled. I am working on digging up more information in regards to this as only the local ABC affiliate down there has a story about it. If wanting to read more about recent events on the border, the CBS affiliate stories are here.

There is something just not right about this and will follow-up when I can gain more information.

01 February, 2011

Each has important links to read (and the comment sections of each); the address to thank Senator Grassley of Iowa and the lamestream media's reporting of Project Gunwalker are but two. If you are not familiar with this travesty, then go here and here.

Pass their links to your family, friends and media, or this one, but pass this along.